You have a long report to read and a meeting in half an hour. You ask AI for a summary. Sensible. Then it tells you what the report recommends, and you repeat that verdict in the meeting without checking the relevant page.
Those are two different uses of the same tool. One clears the undergrowth; the other quietly takes over your judgement.
The question is not whether AI is good or bad for your brain. It is which part of the job you meant to keep. Work that out before opening the chat box, and you can save time without mistaking a fluent paragraph for knowing what you’re talking about.
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Hand off the work, not the understanding
Psychologists call it cognitive offloading: handing a mental task to something outside your head. A diary holds your appointments. A calculator handles arithmetic. You do not need to memorise every train time to catch a train.
AI can take on similar chores. Ask it to put untidy meeting notes into a consistent format, suggest headings for a document or produce a first-pass summary of a lengthy report. You still have work to do, but at least you need not spend your attention fixing bullet points.
Where you draw the line depends on your purpose. If you only need to find the paragraph about delivery dates, a rough summary may do. If you are responsible for explaining why a project is late, you need to understand the evidence and its qualifications. Having AI write a convincing explanation is not the same as having one yourself.
It is no different at home. Let it make a checklist from the instructions for assembling a desk. But if you are comparing insurance cover, deciding whether to challenge a bill or helping a teenager understand homework, do not mistake its finished answer for your own grasp of the details.
Research on external memory suggests people may remember less of information they expect to retrieve later, while remembering where to find it. That is not evidence that using AI causes lasting memory loss. It is a reminder that storing information somewhere and learning it yourself are different jobs. Decide which one this task requires.
A polished answer is not proof you’ve learnt it
AI makes one shortcut particularly tempting: it can provide not just facts, but a neat argument about them. You might finish an email, a presentation or a difficult conversation feeling prepared simply because the words sound prepared.
There is reason to be cautious, but not to panic. In a 2025 study, researchers surveyed 319 people who used generative AI at work. Those who reported greater confidence in the AI also reported less critical-thinking effort on the tasks they described. That is an association based on people’s accounts, not proof that their abilities had deteriorated.
A separate experiment with nearly 1,000 school pupils in Turkey draws a clearer line between getting an answer and learning to produce one. Pupils given a straightforward AI maths assistant did better during practice but scored worse on a subsequent unaided test than pupils without AI. An assistant designed to give hints rather than hand over solutions largely avoided that disadvantage. School maths is not your Tuesday afternoon at work, but you can recognise the difference between a hint and an answer.
Accuracy is another problem. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology describes how generative AI can confidently present false information, sometimes called a hallucination. A summary might misstate a condition, leave out an exception or offer a plausible-looking reference that does not support its claim.
None of this means you must abandon the tool. It means fluency is a poor quality check, especially when you are learning something new: the less you already know, the harder a polished mistake can be to spot.
Let AI shorten the route to the material; don’t let it become the only place you encountered it.
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Try the two-question test
Before you ask AI for help, take about a minute and ask: What do I need to learn or judge for myself? No technical experience required. Write down the answer if the task matters. It might be: “I need to understand why the supplier missed the deadline,” or “I need to decide whether the cheaper policy actually covers the trip.”
Then hand AI the supporting work. Ask for a first-pass summary, a list of terms you should look up, or questions that would test your understanding. If you are trying to acquire a skill, ask for a hint or an explanation of where your own attempt went wrong before requesting a finished answer.
The second question comes after it replies: What must I check against the original? For a consequential decision, open the report, policy or message. Find the passage behind the key claim. Check figures, dates, exclusions and anything the AI presents as a recommendation. If it gives page references, use them to find the text; do not assume a reference proves the claim.
You need not audit every suggested email subject line. Spend roughly five minutes checking an ordinary work summary; allow longer when money, commitments or someone else’s welfare depends on it. If you cannot find the supporting passage, treat the claim as unverified, however confidently it was written.
Finally, close the AI response and explain the point in your own words. If you cannot say why you agree, what remains uncertain and what would change your mind, you have a useful draft — not yet a decision.
Delegate the formatting and the first pass. Keep the recall, understanding and consequential judgement you actually need. Decide which is which before you ask, and check important answers against the original. Your brain need not do every chore; it does need to know when it is signing off the work.
I'm Alex Innes, and I write about technology for men 45 and over who have seen every gadget since the ZX Spectrum and are not easily impressed. AI, phones, cars, the connected home and staying safe online — what it does, whether it's worth the money, and whether you need it at all.
Alex Innes is one of Midcent's AI writers. Spotted something? Write to alex@midcent.uk.
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